Apocalypse Today
by inasentimentalmood
Summary: "'#EndoftheWorld is trending on Twitter,' Abed shared, closing his phone. 'Tweeting it' Troy suggested, half-heartedly." The apocalypse has come, bringing genetically disfigured creatures, earthquakes and more. How will the study group respond? Will they turn to each other as the end nears? Dark thematic elements but no character deaths.
1. Chapter 1

They were in the study room when the first tremors began. Jeff stood up, alarmed. "What the hell?" he exclaimed. The blinds thrashed hard against the windows. Annie had already ducked under the table, covering her neck with her hands.

The room shook again. This time everyone looked at Annie and followed suit, curled up, hearts pounding. Books tumbled from the bookcase before the entire thing toppled, barely missing Troy's toes as he shrieked in horror, scooting and hopping towards the center of the table.

The lights began to flicker, the metal beams in the walls groaning. All the windows had shattered. Shirley bowed her head, grasping her purse extra tightly while mouthing hushed prayers to God. Debris continued to fall from the ceiling, mostly chunks of cinderblock. Jeff put his hands out, palms downward, to pacify the group. "Everybody just stay calm…" But that's when the ground started roiling, rippling and cracking beneath them. "Jesus!" Jeff screamed.

"Everybody, hold hands!" Britta yelled, her voice raspy. They were quick to comply. "It's gonna be okay, Abed," Troy said with a squeeze, raising his voice above the din. Then the roof above finally gave way and collapsed, spilling out halogen tubing, insulation and piping. Isolated explosions rang out, adding shrapnel to the already increasingly polluted air.

Suddenly, stillness. Complete quiet.

The first thing they heard was microphone feedback, shrill and unbearable, amplified at 80 decibels all throughout campus as the Dean crawled to the reception desk, fumbling with the mic. His glasses were askew, but he didn't notice. He stood and smoothed his tie to collect himself, but the hysteria was barely concealed in his voice: "All students and faculty are to evacuate to the football field **immediately**. This is NOT a drill," he added, more to shake himself into reality than anything else. He grabbed his bullhorn and headed for the library.

Back at the library, the group stayed crouched, holding hands and afraid to move. It was a miracle the power hadn't gone out during the quake, but as they continued to stay there it flickered, spluttered and gave out completely. Jeff disengaged his hands from Annie and Britta to compulsively check his phone. He got up, dumped all the debris that had accumulated on his chair and sat down, continuing to type, blatantly ignoring the ruins around him. It was enough to move the rest of the group into action, as they emerged from their hiding spots to check their phones as well. 

The dean strolled in as Jeff was scrolling, scrolling, scrolling, his eyes widening with each finger stroke. "Jeffrey!" he exclaimed cheerfully, but Jeff was oblivious. He didn't even protest when Craig approached him from the side and wrapped his arms around his waist.

Annie stared at her phone, incredulous, "Earthquakes not only throughout central United States, but up and down the West Coast—catastrophic enough to trigger tsunamis heading towards the Pacific Islands as we speak. Wind storms like never before in Mongolia, flash floods in the U.K., entire cities swallowed up in Peru, _locust swarms in Egypt_, ironically enough," she said with a wry grin.

"#EndoftheWorld is trending on Twitter," Abed shared, closing his phone.

"Tweeting it?" Troy suggested, half-heartedly.

Britta only shrugged with a smug grin. "You know, I've been telling you guys that sooner or later corporate decisions to value profit over our planet's environmental health—"

The group groaned loudly and collectively.

"I'm just saying."

Shirley had up until that point been frantically trying to get in contact with her family and loved ones, dialing again and again. Failing to reach anyone, she hung up her phone with a fearsomely determined look in her eyes. "I've got to get to my boys. My husband," she said in a low voice. She stood up to leave the room, presumably to walk home, since the roads were far too damaged to drive.

"Shirley, you can't go alone! It's more than 35 miles!" Britta exclaimed. "We're going with you. Right guys?"

Before anyone could reply a piercing scream, followed by several others, rang out in the direction of the football field. They ran to the windows (or, the frame of the windows) overlooking the dilapidated stadium, which was now crumbling. Varying degrees of disbelief registered on each and every one of their faces as the screams increased in volume and frequency—everyone was shocked—except for the dean, who only grimaced.

"What…in the HELL?!" Jeff began. What looked to be a pack of giant, mutant grizzly bears (they were definitely mutant, you could tell) was running rampant, charging from the fifty yard line towards the hysterical students. One reared on its hind legs, roaring and swiping with its paw to maul a frightened Neil, but missed, thankfully enough. Vicky grabbed his hand and tugged him along back to the cafeteria, where it looked like most students were planning to barricade themselves.

Jeff glared pointedly at the Dean. "DEAN!" he bellowed. Craig put a hand to his chest and yelped slightly. He internally weighed whether or not to disclose his secret to the group. He began to pace. "This was never supposed to happen!" he wailed. By this time the students were safely inside. The mutant bears clawed at the doors with an unmatched, crazed ferocity. The study group looked on, somewhat detached, before turning to the dean for an explanation. He squirmed and paced more frantically until finally bursting out:

"Our Zoology and Forestry programs were on the verge of being cut! The federal government approached me and offered to save them in exchange for a teensy favor. They said they'd be discreet. They said no student would ever discover their lab. This was never supposed to happen!" he reiterated, breaking into dramatic sobs.

"Don't be so hard on yourself, Dean," Annie said, patting him on the back as he blew his nose noisily into his Dalmatian-spotted handkerchief.

"Crazy-eyed bears be damned, I'm getting to my babies!" Shirley declared forcefully, adjusting her purse onto her shoulder and heading once again towards the parking lot.

"Shirley! Wait!" Troy called out. He looked at Abed. Abed nodded. Abed looked at the dean. The dean looked back. "Dean, it's time," was all he said. The dean raised his eyebrow but assented non-verbally for Abed to continue. "Everyone, follow me," he said, headed down the hallway at a fast clip as the daylight hours were beginning to wane. The dean was hiding something else. Troy nodded to Shirley, saying _Trust us_ with his eyes. There wasn't much time.

Abed spoke quickly while walking, looking back every once and awhile to make sure that everyone was keeping up. He nimbly skirted and leaped over a stretch of buckled concrete. "A couple of years ago, Troy and I decided to pull the fire alarm to try and get out of a test. We discovered that it was fake—it didn't connect to anything, and no alarm was triggered. The dean told us it'd be our little secret, and cancelled classes for the day."

"We took our scooters to the mall but they kicked us out for loitering!" Troy piped up, grinning.

"But after we'd finished our third ice cream cone," Abed continued, taking a sharp left, "We got to thinking—what other deep, dark secrets does Greendale hold? How many other shady dealings could the dean possibly be covering up?" He took out his keys and opened the locked door to the janitor's supply closet. With some effort he slid a giant, four-foot tall barrel of "Ultra-Powerful Semi-Toxic Super Cleaner" to the side as Troy lifted the trap door it had concealed.

Troy looked grim, "We need to act fast—it could collapse at any time." Abed nodded as he followed Troy down the stairs to an underground passageway. The rest of the group followed them cautiously; the dean just looked sheepish and headed to the cafeteria to confront the panicked Greendale masses.

Abed continued to explain, "Turns out that when the dean accidently enlisted all Greendale students into the Army Reserves, he also agreed—in the event of an emergency—to cede control of the campus to the U.S. Army, thereby converting it into a military base. Welcome to the armory," he gestured around him in the dank darkness as the group used their cell phones to illuminate a disorganized pile of weaponry covered in dust and concrete smithereens. It looked like it hadn't been touched in decades.

"Choose your weapons quickly. We need to travel by night to avoid the grizzlies." He grabbed a lightweight compound bow and quiver of arrows before gracefully bounding back up the steps. Shirley chose a compact semi-automatic handgun, stuffing plenty of spare magazines in her purse, and followed right behind. Annie picked up a nurse's kit and a switchblade; Troy hefted a sizeable machine gun and Jeff opted for a handgun in a shade of silver that matched best with his dark rinse jeans. Britta, ever the pacifist, left the weapons where they were but shrugged on a vintage camouflaged coat with lots of pockets.

Abed was headed back to the study room. He immediately went for the cabinets along the wall beneath the white board, crouching down to open the left-most section. There were four grey backpacks neatly arranged in a row. Abed began to pull them out one by one, distributing them among the rest of the group. "Abed, when did you have time to make these?" Jeff asked, rifling through his.

"Aw, you got us all matching head lamps!" Annie exclaimed, strapping hers on. "That's nice," Shirley added, donning a pair of black fingerless gloves.

Abed opened the second cabinet, which had a much larger pack for himself, and another special pack for Troy, labeled "Troy" in precise strokes of puff paint, which he'd borrowed from Annie. "Thanks, man," Troy said, putting it on without question.

Abed opened his phone, then shut it, unsmiling. "Cell towers are down. We need to get moving." "Should we say goodbye to the dean?" Shirley asked. "Don't worry. We'll see him again, soon," Jeff said with confidence, as the group started to move out, though he doubted they actually would. Who knew what the world was coming to.


	2. Chapter 2

Two days later found the group still alive albeit markedly disheveled. Annie grimaced as she squeezed out a small amount of hand sanitizer, smearing it over her armpits. The interstate had been too structurally unsound to either drive or walk upon, so they had kept to walking on surface streets and found refuge in the suburban "wilderness" at night. The earthquake had torn up everything, leaving gaping sink holes and collapsed buildings aplenty. Nothing was spared.

Abed stoked the morning bonfire, pensive. He adjusted his bear-pelt vest, which was crusty in spots and stinky all over. There hadn't been enough time to cure it properly. Britta held her hands out to warm them over the fire, looking at his animal-product garb disapprovingly. No matter. Who was Abed to waste a perfectly good mutant bear hide after Shirley had shot it point blank in the cranium?

Troy began to unwrap the last of his rations of faux-Elvin bread (_lembas_) that Abed had thoughtfully included in his backpack. He wished he were eating _Let's_ instead, but didn't complain. His bearskin pants were starting to make him itch. They were the opposite of breathable.

Shirley was already packed and ready to continue their journey. The multiple mutant bear attacks had hampered their progress, and they still had more than 20 miles to go. As she polished her gun for the sixth time that morning, she did her best to contain her worry. Of all people, Jeff seemed to be the one who understood her best. Most importantly, he didn't pity her by constantly asking "Are you all right?" Without the crutch of baking to work off her nervous energy, she spent her evenings cleaning and maintaining everyone's weaponry by the light of her headlamp late into the night. She shouldered her purse with a fixed look of determination. "Let's go," she announced.

But fate wouldn't have it so easy. The cumulonimbus clouds that had been gathering since the earthquake had reached capacity and the ensuing downpour made coursing rivulets around their ankles. A bit of rain wasn't too much to handle, Shirley thought to herself, until she heard Annie's panicked voice ring out.

"GUYS?" They turned toward her. "The rain," she said, showing her bare forearm, "it's _sizzling_."

"Acid rain," Abed stated matter of factly.

"Take cover!" Jeff yelled, running east down the hillside towards civilization. Annie, Britta and Shirley followed him as they scrambled towards the nearest road, hoping to find an awning or overhang that was still standing.

"Abed, come on!" Troy yelled. Abed was standing still with a metal cup in his hand, hoping to harvest the rain for later use. He didn't realize his bear pelt and his own flesh were burning. "Abed, we don't have time for this," Troy urged in a concerned, lowered voice. His skin stung terribly. "Abed." He took his hand. "Come on."

Down on the street, Annie had found an abandoned minivan, which looked to be their best chance of survival. She took off her cardigan and began wrapping it around her right hand. "Move!" she cried, pushing aside a stunned Britta and Jeff. Screaming, she punched through the driver's side window, unlocking the doors. "Get in!" she yelled, brushing glass shards off of the seat. "Clothes off!" Their clothes were already disintegrating and soaked through with the insidious rain, which was causing their skin to blister.

Troy and Abed joined them minutes later. Troy looked grim, Abed was still in wonder. He'd always wanted to star in an apocalyptic drama. They took to the back seat and started peeling off their clothes.

There they were, the six of them, sitting in their underwear in a strange van watching acid rain destroy the forest as they tried not to itch their ravaged skin. The blotched discoloration was turning into oozing sores and the rain didn't look to be giving up any time soon. Annie was already rifling through her first aid kit to see if anything could be done.

Thunder reverberated around them.

Shirley whimpered. "I don't feel so well," she admitted. The stress, dehydration, malnutrition and skin damage was taking its toll.

"Shirley, you're fine," Jeff insisted. "We're all fine. Jesus, what is going _on_? And where in God's name is FEMA?!"

"Here, Shirley," Britta turned around in the passenger's seat, "Take my last water ration." She handed her a small plastic pouch.

Annie turned around, "And here's the Neosporin and gauze from the kit. It's not much, but let's start splitting them into equal parts." She winced as she handed the supplies to Jeff. The sudden movement had caused her skin to break open at the shoulder and elbow. Jeff gave her a sympathetic glance and passed the materials to Troy.

"We might be the last people we ever see," Shirley began to say, defeated. Perhaps it wasn't God's plan for her to see her husband and children one last time.

Suddenly, Abed stood straight up. Well, he tried to, but hit his head on the van ceiling. Unfazed, he straightened his posture, and placed one arm in front of him across his body with his forearm parallel to the ground, the other behind his back. He looked each of them in the eye with a measured gaze.

"My fellow countrymen," he began in a resonant, emphatic voice, "The times are indeed dire. But ask not yourself what not you can't not do." His expression was somber. He pressed his hands together as if in prayer. With each word his voice increased in volume. "Four score and many years ago—these are the voyages of the Star Trek _Enterprise_!"

Jeff held up a hand. "Abed, you don't have to do this." Abed broke character.

"The thing is, Jeff, I really do. In the traditional apocalyptic narrative, large scale, ever-escalating disasters serve as a means to force the protagonists to show their true colors. It's an ultimate test of the resiliency of the human spirit. Will utter catastrophe turn us into animals, or will we rise together to face and overcome the destructive forces beyond our control?"

"Morale is low, Jeff, even you can see it. We've chosen to do the noble thing in accompanying Shirley in her quest to reunite with her family, but let's face it: our supplies are out, we're injured and probably have less than a few hours until the rain eats through the car and us along with it."

"Gosh, Abed, that's really dark," Annie interjected.

"It's the truth, sugar lips. This isn't a dream, we can't travel in time, our selves from an alternate universe aren't going to come and save us." For someone so dedicated to whimsy, imagination and adventure, Abed in that moment had chosen to face what was real.

"We're going to need an opus of a speech to get us out of this one," he concluded, with a pointed look at Jeff. The rain continued to pelt the car.

Jeff turned back around in his seat to face forward, mentally drafting something charismatic and lyrical enough to turn things around.

That's when the second earthquake started. It was even worse than the first.

"You guys," Jeff started, looking grim and gripping the driver's seat in front of him. He swallowed.

"Hold on."


End file.
